Match Play's Exponential Growth Opportunity

I got this reader email following the most recent edition of Alcaraz-Sinner for the U.S. Open on Sunday. I found it to be interesting and something I haven’t thought of.

Here’s what he said.

Counter: The WGC-Match Play event never really did this.

Counter to the counter: Golf doesn’t lend itself to compelling matchups when 64 players are involved in a match play tournament. There is too much volatility, and you don’t get your version of Alcaraz-Sinner often enough.

So you get a final four of, like, Matt Fitzpatrick, Wyndham Clark, Taylor Pendrith and Chris Kirk, which is like if tennis got a U.S. Open semifinals of Taylor Fritz, Alex de Minaur, Alex Michelsen and Gael Monfils.

The obvious solution here for golf is to only include the top eight or 16 players in the world in your match play events. Whether you want that to be the Tour Championship or something else like the old Volvo Match Play event.

Here’s the bracket from 2005.

And here’s what it would look like if they took the current Data Golf top 16 right now.

Ludvig-Scottie
Bryson-English Bryson
Rory-Cantlay
Hovland-Fleetwood

All in Round 1?

But again, those are just the immediate benefits. The long-term effects, as Doug B. pointed out, will take years. Regardless, I think the Tour (or some league) has to re-implement match play in a meaningful way. I’m not sure if it’s an end-of-year playoff type of event or if you can just create an event out of thin air and get people to care about it (I definitely lean toward the former).

But match play is (still) the lifeblood of golf, even if it’s not the de rigueur of modern professional golf. It needs to some kind of standing at the top of the game.